


Second Chances

by fabrega



Series: Counteroffers & Second Chances [2]
Category: Overwatch (Video Game)
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Canonical Character Death, Fall of Overwatch, M/M, Non-Linear Narrative, Original Character Death(s), Post-Fall of Overwatch
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-02
Updated: 2017-01-02
Packaged: 2018-09-14 07:21:37
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,968
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9168007
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fabrega/pseuds/fabrega
Summary: Gabe Reyes dies, and the world mourns. Those two facts, Jesse learns, aren't related the way he thinks they ought to be.





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [smarshtastic](https://archiveofourown.org/users/smarshtastic/gifts).



> For actual hero [smarshtastic](https://archiveofourown.org/users/smarshtastic/pseuds/smarshtastic), who put up with me while I was writing this, helped me whip it into shape, and wrote a bunch of fluff to counteract it. :D

It doesn't take long after he jerks awake for Jesse to assess his situation. He's tied to a chair in a dim room, a flickering light in the corner the only source of illumination. There's a closed door in the wall to his left. He's got mostly superficial injuries, some cuts and bruises, an aching rib or two. His gun is missing, and so is his other gun and his flashbang grenades. He's also missing the knife Gabe had given him that he keeps tucked in a hidden pocket in his boot, the one that has previously been so well hidden that this is the first time he's been caught without it.

Whoever has him, they've left him his hat.

He tugs experimentally at his restraints, but they're fastened solidly, even against the strength of his metal arm. He _is_ able to wriggle his chair over to the door and maneuver himself up to check it, but it's locked--not surprising, but always worth checking out. He's actually escaped that way from a similar situation once before.

He debates trying to wedge his chair under the door handle, make his captors' lives a little harder, but until he knows who they are and what they want, he probably shouldn't antagonize them too much. They obviously want him alive, at least for now, and he shouldn't do anything to change that.

As he's wriggling his chair back to about where it was when he'd woken up, a thick black smoke billows into the room from a small grate in the ceiling. On instinct, Jesse tucks his mouth and nose down into his bandana and braces for the effects of whatever it is they're pumping in, but instead of dissipating out into the room, the smoke hovers for a moment before resolving itself into a human shape. Jesse is glad that the lower half of his face is hidden, because his mouth drops open. He'd heard rumors of the man in black, the monster hunting down his old friends, but the rumors hadn't nearly done him justice.

"Jesse McCree," the man says. His voice is a low rasp that sends a chill up Jesse's spine.

Jesse tips his face up out of his bandana. "Are you the one who's been killing Overwatch agents?" he asks, doing his damnedest to keep his voice steady. Anger and fear are bubbling up in his chest, and his trigger finger itches.

"They call me the Reaper," the man says. Jesse gets a good look at him as he steps more fully into the flickering light. He's wearing a mask that looks like some kind of inhuman skull and gloves with sharp talons on them, and the sweep of the long coat he's got on reminds Jesse, irrationally, of the ones Strike Commander Morrison used to wear.

"'s a dumb name and a dumb getup," Jesse says.

The man chuckles. "Is that so, cowboy?"

"You work for Talon, right?" Jesse continues, attempting to seem unfazed. The man nods. "Well, I've got some bad news for you--Talon took away the best thing in my life and killed the man I loved, so I am gonna get out of here and I am gonna kill every last fucking one of them, starting with you. You should've killed me when you had the chance, partner."

The man stalks closer to Jesse, reaches one hand under his chin to tilt his face up and examine it. Jesse's expression is stony and furious even as the talons on the gloves dig into his skin. Then, the man leans down, puts his face alongside Jesse's own, and while Jesse is trying to figure out the best way to headbutt the guy in this position, the man says quietly in his ear, "I have what I think ought to be a pretty compelling counteroffer."

Jesse's eyes widen. "Fuck you," he spits. "Gabe Reyes _died_."

The man stands back up, regarding him from behind the mask. "Yes," he says, "I did."

*

Gabe Reyes dies, and the world mourns. Those two facts, Jesse learns, aren't related the way he thinks they ought to be. The holo-vids tell him the official line is that Gabe had been dirty, that he and Morrison had fought, and that the explosion at the Swiss base had been both premeditated and Gabe's fault. Jesse knows there's no way in hell that's true--there had been something rotten in Blackwatch, sure, but Gabe had been investigating it, trying to root it out. He hadn't been letting it fester on purpose, and he certainly hadn't been complicit.

Jesse seems to be the only one who knows any differently than the official line, though, and who's going to listen to _him_? He's a nobody now, and before that he'd been Blackwatch. He's sure that his opinion is trusted by and wanted by no one.

Jack Fucking Morrison gets a state funeral, is buried with full honors and a funeral procession a mile long. Gabe gets nothing, literally nothing, except a posthumous public inquest and his good name dragged through the mud.

Jesse gets drunk.

"He saved the world," he tells the bartender, waving his glass at the holo-vid display. The bartender rolls her eyes. "He saved the whole goddamn world and now look at this."

"Funny how people can change," the bartender says, not looking up from the glass she's cleaning.

"Fuck you."

The bartender fixes him with a stare. "You're not one of those Blackwatch terrorists, are you?"

" _Fuck you_ ," Jesse repeats, more emphatically this time.

"Look, buddy, I don't have to let you keep drinking here--"

Jesse sighs, mutters an apology, takes another long drink of his whiskey.

"Did you know him or something?" The sympathy in the bartender's voice is almost too much for Jesse to bear, and he finishes what's left of his drink in one quick gulp.

"I thought I did."

*

Jesse spits at the Reaper. "I'm not going to sit here and let you--"

The man takes a step back and gestures at how Jesse is currently tied to the chair. "You don't have much of a choice there, cowboy."

"--going to sit here," Jesse tries again, "And let _you_ of all people sully Gabe Reyes' memory and good name."

The man laughs, a low, sour sound. "You may be the only person in the world who believes that Gabriel Reyes has a good name left to sully."

Jesse snorts. "There are a couple of us," he says. He's not going to name them, though, because whoever this asshole is, he doesn't deserve to know the people who still have Gabe's back, even after everything.

"Stef Valdez," the man says, and Jesse blinks at him. "Prithi Jayachandran. Am I missing anyone, or did I manage to alienate everyone else who might be on my side?"

"Fareeha Amari." The words are out of Jesse before he can stop them--of course anyone who knows as much as this man does about Jesse and Gabe's history would know about Stef and Prithi, would know all about the Blackwatch strike team they'd all been part of. Jesse shouldn't have brought up Fareeha; now he's put her in danger--

"Of course she would," the man says, his voice softening with something that almost sounds like fondness.

"Don't you dare," Jesse murmurs. He struggles against his restraints.

The mask tilts thoughtfully as the man regards Jesse. "You still don't believe me."

"Got it in one."

"I've already told you something that only the two of us should know."

That _is_ a good point, Jesse has to admit. If this monster really was Gabe Reyes (which he obviously is not) Jesse's not sure how he could prove it in a way that Jesse would believe. "You could have known it if Talon had bugged Reyes."

The man scoffs. "You think I'd let myself get bugged?"

"I think Gabe let a lot of things happen that I didn't expect, there towards the end."

*

Prithi is the first to leave.

(Well, no, that's not true; Gabe complains bitterly to Jesse almost nightly that Blackwatch seems to be hemorrhaging agents and money and supplies, and everything lines up in these reports but none of it makes _sense_ \-- Jesse does his best to be supportive through the same rants every night, through angry outbursts that shouldn't be directed at him but are, through late nights where they both need to sleep but Gabe can't seem to put the tablet down and come to bed. He rubs gentle circles into the skin of Gabe's back and kisses him and thanks every deity he can think of that the two of them are solid enough to get through this.)

But Prithi leaving is the first one whose leaving makes Jesse take notice. 

Their last mission had been planting bugs and charges in what turned out to be the headquarters of a political dissident group in Kansas; on the flight back to HQ, everyone had sat quietly, not meeting anyone else's eyes, while Prithi had listed the missions they'd been on in the last six months: this one, the kidnapping, two train robberies, the corporate espionage, the weapons sabotage, two assassinations. 

She doesn't even mention the sting where they'd had to watch on the monitors as Fred Shiga bled out so they wouldn't blow their cover. After the fact--and even in the moment--Jesse had objectively agreed with Edwards that they'd had to let it happen, that the life of a friend hadn't been worth more than the thousands of people they're saving by bringing this butcher in off the street. That didn't make it feel good, though, and there had been an argument in the control booth as Shiga lost blood, Prithi shouting that they had to do something and Edwards repeating that they can't, _they can't_ until she'd punched him twice in the gut and stormed out. She hadn't shown up on the monitors, though, and Shiga had died and Prithi had been put on a disciplinary suspension for three weeks.

It's all felt terrible, not like anything any of them had signed up for when they'd joined Overwatch. These last few months have felt more like Jesse is 17 and back in Deadlock than anything else.

"I can't do this anymore," Prithi tells him, standing in the hallway outside Jesse's quarters, all her things in a suitcase beside her. "I thought it might get better, after Shiga-- but it hasn't, and the kind of stuff we're doing, I don't think I could live with myself if I didn't get out now."

Jesse nods at her, unable to come up with anything to say that would convince her to stay. He knows it's not fair to her to even try.

She gives him a sad smile, steps forward and wraps her arms around him in a tight hug. "Do what you can," she says into his shoulder. "I know it shouldn't be up to you to fix this, but--"

"Nobody's got Reyes' ear like I do," Jesse finishes for her, not letting go. They both know that Gabe's not the one assigning the missions anymore--the guy who does came in from Overwatch proper and had Strike Commander Morrison's name all over his paperwork, so Gabe had no choice but to give him the job--but he _is_ still the Blackwatch Commander, which has to be good for something.

*

"I'm going to untie you," the man says, after staring at Jesse for several long moments.

Jesse stiffens, unsure what the man's game is. "Gonna tell you now that that's a bad idea," he says through gritted teeth. "I'm going to kill you."

"I'd like to see you try. I'm going to untie you, you're going to take off this mask, and then we're going to talk." Jesse wonders if he should be worried about how sure the man sounds. 

Exactly as he promised, the man loosens the restraints holding Jesse to the chair. Jesse flexes his ankles and his good wrist, the movements small and nonthreatening, before letting loose a roar and lunging at the man, both hands outstretched, reaching for his neck. 

The man--the Reaper--goes incorporeal, wispy smoke that slips through his fingers. He reforms on the other side of the room, and Jesse lunges at him again. This time, Jesse manages to grab him, and his momentum topples them both into a pile on the floor.

"This feels familiar," the man rasps from below him, and Jesse's rage surges as grabs for the man's throat. He's aware that he's fighting angry, and even though there's a voice in the back of his head that sounds a lot like Gabe's telling him that he'll never win without a clear head, he feels the man's neck under his hands and he squeezes.

Next thing he knows, the man has shifted both their weights and flipped them, pinning Jesse to the ground much more competently than Jesse had pinned him moments before. The man says something that sounds like _I didn't want to have to do this_ , almost too quietly to hear, and then the talons of his gloves are around Jesse's neck. Jesse gasps for breath. With one hand, he pulls at the man's grip on his neck, hoping to pry a few fingers loose; with the other, he grabs at the man's face, the boy from Deadlock in him taking over and trying to fight dirty, poking at his throat or his eyes or wherever will get the man's grip to go slack.

He gets a little purchase on the mask. It comes off more easily than Jesse had expected, and the breath gets knocked out of Jesse in an entirely different way.

Both of them stop fighting.

*

Jesse leaves eight months after Prithi does, three assassinations and countless arguments with Gabe later, when it's finally and forcefully been explained to him that even having the ear of the Blackwatch Commander isn't going to change the things he wants to change.

He doesn't leave Blackwatch with much. He has a couple of changes of clothes, a little bit of money he'd been keeping in a tin under his mattress, and Peacekeeper. (He wouldn't ever admit it, but he also has one of Gabe's hoodies tucked down at the bottom of the duffel bag, underneath everything else as though hiding it will make it less stupidly sentimental or make it hurt less.)

He also has a secure comm that Stef Valdez presses into his palm when she discovers him with everything he owns in a duffel bag slung across his back, trying to sneak out of the base. She assures him that she'll be the only one who knows he has it, and he trusts that she's telling the truth--after all the years they've spent together in the makeshift family that Commander Reyes' strike team has turned out to be, how could he not?

He half-expects to have to argue with her too about his leaving. She looks at his bag and looks at his face and shakes her head, but doesn't try to talk him out of it; that's what she's been doing these last few months when the team gets post-mission drinks and they talk in hushed tones about the things that made Prithi leave and how they haven't gotten better. Stef agrees with Gabe--Commander Reyes--that the way to fix whatever's going wrong with the system is from inside it, while Jesse is more and more of the opinion that sometimes a thing's too broken to be fixed, no matter who it is who's doing the fixing. (Edwards sits back with his beer and tells them both to relax, it's just a job.)

She gives him the comm and a promise to keep in touch and enough cash to catch transport anywhere he wants to go. She doesn't ask him where he's going; neither of them knows if Commander Reyes will try to come after him, and it's probably best for them both if she doesn't know where he ends up.

He leaves, and immediately feels unmoored. He wanders, spends some time in the old Eastern Bloc countries, a while in the Pacific Northwest, one disastrous week in Morocco; eventually, against all his instincts and better judgment, he finds himself in the American Southwest. Nowhere is going to feel like home and he knows why, but the place where he grew up somehow comes closest.

He moves from small town to small town, doing odd jobs for money, trying to quell the restless feeling in his bones but never quite succeeding. He starts smoking again--no reason not to, nobody but him depending on him having bright and full lungs. If he stands in the drug store and agonizes over whether or not to buy the brand whose taste will probably always remind him of Gabe, well, that's no one's business but his own.

He leans into the cowboy thing he's got going on, because he likes it and because like he told Commander Reyes all those years ago, it's its own kind of stealth. More than once he runs afoul of small-town law enforcement only to have that very same law enforcement stop him on the street later and ask him, a nice man in jeans and a button-up and work boots, if he'd seen a man in a cowboy hat and poncho around anywhere.

True to her word, Stef keeps in touch. She tells him, obliquely, about the missions they've gone on, the politics Jesse doesn't regret not being in the middle of anymore, the three new kids they've had to bring in to replace Jesse on the team. 

"Reyes... isn't taking it well," she says, and Jesse feels his chest go tight.

"Like when Prithi left?" he finds himself asking, both hoping and not hoping that that's all it is.

"You know it's worse than that," Stef says harshly. "He and Edwards are spending a lot of time holed up together going over financial reports, which can't be good for either of them." 

Something ugly flares in the pit of Jesse's stomach at that. He knows what _he'd_ been doing when he and Commander Reyes had been "going over financial reports", and it certainly hadn't been reports. And it makes sense; Edwards and Commander Reyes have known each other since before Jesse had even been recruited into Blackwatch, and Edwards isn't a bad-looking guy: blonde with broad shoulders and a dimple in his chin, very much what's historically been Commander Reyes' type.

"They're, uh--" he tries to ask, faltering even as the words try to leave his mouth. There's no nice way to ask if your ex (if that's even what they are, they probably are) is fucking someone new.

Stef cuts him off, her voice and words severe. "Don't be a dumbass." She sighs. "You know, you could talk to him, ask him yourself."

"It's complicated," Jesse mutters.

"If you say so." She does not sound convinced. "Can't be more complicated than the shit you've got going on now. I don't know what either of you said or what all this bullshit is manifesting as on your end, but Reyes is stomping around in an almost biblical rage pretty much all the time, and it's making it hard for _all_ of us to do our damn jobs."

"I'm sure he'll get over it," Jesse says quietly. Stef sighs again.

Jesse keeps moving. He doesn't stop until the news breaks that Blackwatch has been dragged into the light. Everything that Jesse had been afraid of, everything that Gabe had suspected but had never been able to prove, it's all there, splashed across the front of every newspaper and headlining every nightly news program. His first impulse is to drop everything and go back, because he knows how badly Gabe must be taking this--but no, in that last argument, Commander Reyes had made his thoughts on Jesse leaving perfectly clear, and surely those thoughts wouldn't have changed now that Jesse has done the actual leaving, abandoning him to what's turning out to be a really important, really awful time. If he'd needed Jesse--if he'd _wanted_ Jesse--he'd have come after him, have sent a search party, have brought him back. Surely he's got things figured out on his own. Surely he doesn't need Jesse as much as Jesse's finding that he needed Gabe.

He's at Prithi's a few months later when The News breaks--the Swiss headquarters exploded, Blackwatch presumed responsible, Morrison and Reyes dead. Jesse and Prithi stare at the breaking news crawl, then at each other silently; in the background, Jesse can hear Prithi's wife saying _oh my god, that's terrible_ but mostly he hears the beating of his own heart, loud in his ears. Without being told to, Jesse starts packing his bag--they're going to come after former Blackwatch agents, and Jesse can't be here when they do.

They're in the hallway outside Prithi's apartment and she's locking the door behind them when it actually hits him, square in the goddamn chest: Gabe Reyes is dead. Gabe Reyes is dead, and Jesse had left him without even saying goodbye. His reasons had made sense to him at the time--he'd been afraid they would fight more; he'd been afraid Gabe would have tried to talk him out of leaving; he'd been afraid, period.

He didn't say goodbye to Gabe Reyes, the man he loved, and now he's never going to get the chance to.

*

"You _died_ ," Jesse says when he gets his breath again.

"You _left_ ," the man spits back-- _Gabe_ spits back, because it is, it's Gabe under the mask. The color is drained from his face and the skin stretches over his bones in ways that seem close to but not quite human, but it's Gabe, Jesse's sure of it. He's older than Jesse remembers--but then again, Jesse is too. It takes all of his strength not to reach out and touch Gabe's face.

"I left," he says, "And I have had to live with that every day. Believe me, there's nothing you can do that will make me feel any worse about that than I already do."

Gabe looks down at him, the same inscrutable look on his face as always, then he climbs to his feet and offers Jesse a hand up. Jesse looks at Gabe's face, then at his gloved hand, and shuffles to his feet on his own. The aching ribs he'd taken stock of earlier are not happy with all this activity and are aching more strenuously in protest. He steps into Gabe's space--closer than he probably ought to, all things considered--and stays there.

"I'm here to--" Gabe starts, and then he pauses, a look of confusion flickering across his face. "Talon would want me to recruit you, if they knew that you were alive."

"I've run into a couple of them who knew me, although they didn't get much of a chance to tell anyone they did. Why do they think I'm dead?"

"I told them that you were," Gabe says. Jesse does reach out now, running a thumb along Gabe's cheekbone. It looks like Gabe nearly flinches away from the touch, and Jesse finds that he had lied to Gabe earlier--there _was_ something he could do that would make Jesse feel more guilty. "It was a sentimental mistake I'm sure they would overlook if you came with me to them now."

Jesse steps back now, and a gale of harsh laughter bursts out of him. "Holy shit, Gabe, you're going to make us do this again?"

A frown wrinkles Gabe's brow. "Do what again?"

Jesse stomps to the other side of the room, even further out of Gabe's space, putting the chair he'd been tied up on between them. Of all the ways he'd imagined their impossible reunion going, this hadn't even made the goddamn list. "Have this same stupid argument again! The one where you try to convince me to stay with you, because _you couldn't do it without me, and what could possibly go wrong if we're together_ and I try to convince you to leave with me, because _plenty of things could and will go wrong, with or without us_. The one we had before...before I left."

Gabe's voice is dark and his expression is darker. "The one where I tried to convince you to join Talon, and the one where you told me that everything I'd done for you meant nothing and that I should go fuck myself?"

"Oh, was that the fucking subtext there? Jesus christ, Reyes, that's worse than I thought--"

"Not subtext," Gabe interrupts him, looking slightly puzzled. "The actual text of the argument. I asked you to join Talon with me, and you told me, literally and vocally, to go fuck myself."

Jesse stops in his tracks. "What? That's not what happened at all. You tried to convince me to stay with you, to help you root out whatever rotten thing you were sure was at the heart of Blackwatch, and I tried to convince you to leave with me."

"Why didn't I leave with you?" Gabe asks. The surprise in his voice is killing Jesse.

"If you ever find out, be sure to let me know," he says quietly. "I wanted to leave, and I wanted you to leave with me--hell, I wanted you to leave, period, with or without me. Didn't seem like anything good was going to come of that situation."

Gabe huffs a laugh at what an understatement that turned out to be.

"I said some things I regretted. You said some things I regretted. You called me damn ungrateful for not sticking with you after all we'd been through together, and then you got real mad, told me that if I left, I shouldn't bother coming back. Not sure if you meant it, but I never stopped to find out, and then..." Jesse trails off, attempting to encompass the entire fall of Overwatch in a shrug.

"Why do I remember it differently?"

"You don't think I'm lying to you?"

Gabe glares at him.

"Well, what else do you remember?" Jesse asks. He steps back around the chair, closer to Gabe but still a little bit out of arm's reach.

"The last few years at Blackwatch are a little hazy," Gabe admits. "When I woke up at Talon, they told me that might be a side effect of the treatment I'd been given to keep me...mostly alive. It's strange, though, because the memories I have of our argument are crystal clear."

"Crystal clear, and wrong." Jesse cannot keep the righteous indignation from his voice. "Sounds to me like Talon messed with your memories and gave you a convenient excuse."

"Wouldn't be the first time they've screwed me over, but why would they? Spite?"

Jesse says nothing, can't bring himself to meet Gabe's eyes.

"I can hear you thinking over there, McCree," Gabe says. Jesse looks up at the sound of the smile in Gabe's voice.

*

"I would have followed you off a goddamn cliff, Gabe," Jesse says. He feels wrung-out. They've been going back and forth about this for nearly two hours, and he is no closer to getting Gabe to leave with him than he had been two hours ago. "I still would, if that's what you need from me, and you fucking _know_ that."

"I know, Jesse," Gabe says, and he sounds almost as tired as Jesse feels. "I know."

*

"Talon couldn't afford to have us on the same side. They know that we were better together," Jesse says, finally meeting Gabe's eyes. "And they know that I would have followed you off a goddamn cliff if that's what you needed from me."

"I know," Gabe says. "I didn't realize it before, but I think that's why I'm here."

It feels like they're on the precipice of something momentous, but before either of them can make a move, someone pounds on the door. A voice shouts, "We know you're in there, Reaper!"

"You brought backup?!" Jesse hisses.

"Why would I bring backup? Nobody's supposed to know you're alive!"

Jesse looks at him for a long moment. Everything he knows about the Reaper tells him that he's in trouble, that he should be doing his best to escape on his own right now and leave Reaper to his compatriots. Everything he knows about Gabe, though--can he bring himself to leave Gabe again?

"The door is locked," Gabe says as the person or people on the other side continue to pound on it. "I have the only key with me, but it probably won't take them long to break it down. All of your weapons and most of mine are in another locked room that I can get to," he gestures to the grate in the ceiling, "But I'd have to leave you to go get them, and I can't guarantee they won't have broken the door down by the time I get back."

"You should go, then."

"Not without you."

Jesse smiles despite himself. "Okay then. The Gabe Reyes I knew always had three backup plans and twelve different escape routes. What have you got?"

Gabe holds out a hand to him. "Do you trust me?" he asks.

Suddenly, Jesse is 17 again and sitting across the table from this handsome stranger who wants to give him a second chance. "With my life," he says, and grabs Gabe's hand.

Gabe pulls him close, and then there's a sensation that Jesse's not sure he's ever going to be able to fully describe. It feels like all of him dissolves, and his field of vision goes to a full 360 degrees. Then he's moving, and he watches almost from outside himself as he shifts from inside the room up into the ceiling, twisting through a series of vents before coming down into a room that he's never seen before but is sure is his destination. Then his body is back, deposited gently on the floor of this new room, and Gabe is standing above him, breathing hard. The room is small and sparsely furnished, with a folding table surrounded by three chairs. On the table are Peacekeeper and the rest of Jesse's weapons, as well as a set of very nice shotguns.

"Never tried that before," Gabe says, leaning heavily against the table as Jesse hurries to his feet and gathers his weapons. "I'm glad it worked. We could've ended up as some kind of awful Star Trek-style teleporter accident."

Jesse stops. "You couldn't have told me that _before_ you tried it?" He looks over at Gabe, who's still leaning pretty hard on the table. "You gonna be okay?"

Gabe waves a hand vaguely. "That...took a lot more out of me than I thought it would." From the hallway, there's a crash and a shout. "Sounds like they've broken down the door. Now that they know we're not in there, they're going to start checking the rest of the base, room by room," he says, gathering his shotguns from the table. "We're probably going to have to fight our way out of here."

"Just like old times," Jesse says, holding Peacekeeper at the ready.

It probably shouldn't be surprising, how quickly and easily the two of them fall back into a rhythm, even though Jesse's fighting style has changed over years on the run by himself and Gabe has an entirely new bag of tricks to pull from. Soon enough, though, they're back to back, headed for the exit of the base and slicing a path forward through the almost shocking number of agents Talon had sent to retrieve their prize. They really must not want to lose Gabe; Jesse grins to himself, knowing how that feels.

They're almost there, just three more guys in body armor between them and the door, and Jesse takes out two when the third says, "Are you fucking kidding me? McCree?" and pulls off his helmet.

"Edwards?" Jesse says, his jaw dropping open. "What the hell are you doing here? With Talon?"

"Look," Edwards says, his eyes darting back and forth between Jesse and Gabe, raising his hands carefully (but, Jesse notes, not actually dropping his gun), "I don't know what's going on here, but I'm sure we can talk it out like reasonable people--"

Gabe strides forward, puts his shotgun right between Edwards' eyes, and pulls the trigger; Jesse flinches away as what's left of Edwards' brain splatters onto the door behind him. "That _motherfucker_ ," Gabe begins, his tone venomous, but Jesse puts a gentle hand on his arm and says, "Let's go."

*

"Do you ever think about what you'll do after Blackwatch?" Jesse asks Gabe. They're in the canteen, and the rest of the strike team is due to join them for lunch any minute now, but Jesse's been feeling a little restless and a little anxious recently and can't help but ask.

"Pretty sure my plan has always been to die in the line of duty," Gabe says after looking thoughtful for a moment.

"Bold choice," Jesse says. He gives Gabe a mostly-genuine smile.

"You thinking about getting out?" Gabe asks, and Jesse knows him well enough to notice the way his own smile goes a little brittle too.

"Not yet," Jesse says, probably too quickly, "But it would be nice to, maybe someday. Maybe have the kind of life we're fighting to let other people have--you know, white picket fence and all that." He moves some of the food on his tray around with his fork, then looks shyly back up at Gabe. "Maybe with you?"

Gabe's smile relaxes, and his gaze turns warm and sweet. "Yeah," he says, "Yeah, maybe."

*

"I know It's not the white picket fence I always dreamed of," Jesse says, "But it's not a bad place to call home." They're standing in front of the hideout Jesse's been working out of for the past year or so; their escape from the Talon base had been clean--no survivors, and Jesse is resolutely not thinking about how the fight seemed to have recharged Gabe--and they've made their way here, to the safest place Jesse knows.

"You're sure you want me here?"

Jesse chuckles. "You're sure you want to be here? Life on the run ain't much of a life."

"Wherever you've been has been 'home' for me for a long time, Jesse," Gabe says quietly, leaning into him. "I wouldn't want to be anywhere else."

"You know," Jesse says, with just enough teasing in his voice that he can plausibly deny being serious about it, "Somebody once told me that occasionally the universe gives some lucky bastard a second chance. Maybe this is ours."

"Who told you that?" Gabe says, nudging up against him. "Guy sounds like an idiot. You never should have listened to him."

"Right, right," Jesse says, pulling him close and tilting their foreheads together, "What did he know?"

(That night, in the bed Jesse can't believe they finally get to share, they spend some time relearning each other's bodies. The way Gabe touches every scar Jesse's gotten during his years on the run feels almost reverent, and Jesse hopes he can deserve it. Jesse runs his hands along every inch of Gabe's remade body, kisses every new jut and angle, looks up to where he knows Gabe is trying not to watch him, worried of what Jesse might think. It's _Gabe_ , though; Jesse's not sure what it would take to make him stop loving Gabe--certainly more than this.

He kisses Gabe. He gets his chance to say goodbye, and a chance to say hello again. He'll take this second chance.)

**Author's Note:**

> Feel free to come yell at me about this on [twitter](https://twitter.com/carithlee) or [tumblr](https://etriva.tumblr.com/)!


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